


walk beneath the sun

by marquis



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: 12x100, Boston Flowers (Blaseball Team), Canon-Typical Violence, Other, anyway i made myself sad about dead flowers what can you do, or yknow, twelve scenes of a hundred words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:34:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29409144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marquis/pseuds/marquis
Summary: Hurley Pacheco and Matheo Carpenter are not in love. But it is a damn close thing.(a fic of twelve 100-word scenes, covering the time from their joining the team to hurley's death.)
Relationships: Hurley Pacheco & Matheo Carpenter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 12
Collections: No Single Flower Wilted





	walk beneath the sun

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic written in twelve scenes of 100 words, a format from Lewis Attilio's real baseball short stories, on Medium as @pigeonize. I found out about it from @crookedsaint and their fic, [let me let you down](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29314074).
> 
> Title from "String Theory" by Les Friction.
> 
> CW for incineration, I suppose, though it's fairly vague.

**i.**

There is a room full of flowers, and it is theirs. The room lives in the back of a store, a bigger space full to bursting with gardenias and chrysanthemums, but that is not the part that matters.

The part that matters is this, a tiny office with so much green there is nowhere left for her to place her books, or her coat, or her bags. There are only flowers and an old watering can.

When Matheo comes to visit, he stacks the pots along the windowsill. Cross-legged on the floor, he laughs at Hurley.

“You’re a goddamn hoarder.”

**ii.**

There is a field full of flowers, and it is not theirs. It is everyone’s, and it is no one’s, and sometimes she is allowed to spend time inside of it. One day, they give her a jersey with her name on the back; the next, Matheo is there too, with a jersey all his own.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Hurley says, though they smile as they watch Matheo fumble with the buttons.

“Yeah, well,” he says, around the hat held in his teeth. “Maybe I just wanted to knock a ball around. Did you think of that?”

**iii.**

They are not in love.

This is something they say, over and over again. They are not in love, but they love nonetheless. It comes in the form of Hurley offering the crusts from their pizza and Matheo taking it. It comes in the form of one watering plants while the other charts out architectural layouts in chalk on the floor of the dugout.

That love comes in choosing lockers beside one another and offering help with tightening the straps of catcher’s gear, in holding another’s shoulder for support.

That love, in short, comes in silence. And yet it stays.

**iv.**

The ball stings as it hits her in the side, knocking the breath from her lungs and the ground from her feet. She falls heavily to her knees and every inch of her long body is a burden, suddenly, and she clenches her fingers in the grass and tries to find her breath again.

“Sorry!” Dunn cries out.

Despite the stinging in their side, Hurley cannot bring themself to hold a grudge.

“I’ll be fine,” they breathe out. “Just give me a minute.”

Bryanayah stands beside the plate, a bat held in several hands. “I can fix that for you.”

**v.**

There are very few things worse than the smell of fire. The firefly spark of still-burning embers forces Hurley to keep his distance, opting instead to stay safe on the outskirts of the circle.

This was not the case before. This is a new fear, an unfamiliar one. Around their heart, the ribcage roots tighten like a clamshell, an ineffective barrier against that which wants nothing more than to consume.

The plants speak in hushed voices, whispering soft calls for Hurley to join them. This, too, is new; but it is not frightening, and Hurley welcomes them into her readily.

**vi.**

Their jersey is just this side of too-tight, rubbing itself threadbare against the rough bark of tree roots and stone that live on Hurley’s skin.

“I warned you about this,” Matheo mutters, with a trademark furrow in his brow that they have grown so fond of. “Spending too much time with your damn plants.”

The sweet-damp smell of mossy soil follows them around now, a constant reminder of days spent kneeling in the sun with their hands twisted down among the roots. Hurley reaches out and smooths out the wrinkles of Matheo’s frown with her thumb.

“It’s not so bad.”

**vii.**

There is something magical in the way that Matheo works, something hypnotic in the quick steady hands. Though it is different from Hurley’s plodding, her methodical dedication to taking time, it is nonetheless entrancing.

Red to red, green to green, melding copper and silver and coating it once more to protect it. Weaving the metallic roots into a garden capable of carrying electrical current and withstanding the test of time.

“Ugh,” Matheo groans. “Enough romanticizing the lightbulbs and outlets. It’s simple work, and I enjoy it. Leave it there.”

Hurley smiles to herself and knows that he is smiling too.

**viii.**

There is a death, and it is not one of theirs but it is one of someone’s. There is something: a memorial, a burial, a quiet commemoration. Hurley does not know; Hurley is in the Garden, fingers pressing deep into the solid ground for reassurance.

“We could stop,” Matheo says. “No point waiting for someone to turn us to kindling.”

There is a flower shop, and it is hers. It is warm, and it is green, and it is safe. But Hurley has tasted the living earth, and it has tasted her back. They cannot leave it behind so easily.

**ix.**

When fire descends on the field, they are who the other looks for first. The moments in between are the darkest, when it is unclear through the smoke and the haze whether they will find who they are looking for.

Matheo returns to the dugout and grabs Hurley by the forearm. If his nails were longer, they would leave crescents that mirror the shadow of the sun behind the moon. They do not.

“It’s going to be okay,” Hurley says. “We will get out of this.”

She does not say that she is afraid. It does not matter either way.

**x.**

A slip of paper on Hurley’s desk, scribbled on with the unsteady strokes of a man used to drawing in straight, measured lines. It’s decorated with the silhouettes of flowers, identified with names written so hastily they are nearly unreadable. Hurley knows them anyway.

Dwarf sunflowers, gillyflower, oak leaves. Mostly bluebells. The unpracticed hand grows stronger in repetition.

Hurley picks up the paper as gently as she can in her broad hands. It is the first time in many years that they have felt too large, too clumsy for a task.

They are not in love. It’s a close thing.

**xi.**

Fire does not know how to nurture. Despite its best efforts to hold, to caress, to understand, the best it may do is transform. In a world of plants and forestry, a body of kindling, the best it may do is reveal a fragility. No matter how thick the bark, how green the grass, everything may burn if the temperature is high enough.

She is afraid of the fire. She knows the branches around her ribcage will not save her from its loving hands. When Matheo searches through the smoke and the shadow, she knows he will not find her.

**xii.**

There is a flower shop, and even now it smells like damp moss after summer rain. Even now, he can hear them humming to themself as they pass among the potted plants and tend to the soil with loving, gentle hands.

There is a flower shop, but it is empty except for him. He ought to turn the lights on, but it would not make much difference. Everything is darker now.

Matheo Carpenter surveys the tall shadows of flora he cannot stand to look at anymore. He plucks a bluebell from the pot beside the door, and then he leaves.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me yelling about the Boston Flowers on Tumblr as @leonstamatis, where I went off about Matheo and Hurley this morning and got the idea to do this fic. I'm also in the main discord as @blink, though I don't do much there.


End file.
